45
June passes swiftly and July stretches out over the course of my first holidays as a teacher, grenadine cordials on café terraces and the football World Cup. Off in the distance she hops from foot to foot in the chill of Montparnasse station in the early hours. She gets to know my family home, between lake and ocean. On the first evening, the lake – a sublime place – has saved her a special welcome, shimmering in the last vestiges of sunlight. The next day, after a few grilled sardines gobbled down as we sat beside the sea, she watches as I’m bowled over by malicious waves, and laughs at how much I love it, as I always have, how much I love this, being thrown onto the jagged rocks and sharp little shells, launching straight back on the attack, falling, getting up, and falling again. She can’t get over the way I spend hours in huge waves, turned over and over by their overbearing power. She watches me lose my footing, go under, stop thinking about anything, letting myself be buffeted, spun round, buffeted again, and staying there for hours in this despotic imperious surging, with saltwater all the way down my throat, my eyes closed and my fists balled. At night she tells me about the fears she’s had since childhood, fears that define her. She whispers under the thick quilt.
46
She goes off on tour with her quartet. She leaves me drained. She writes to say join me, I’m dying without you. She writes come, I’m waiting for you, life has no meaning when you’re not here. She writes I’m playing at the Château de Chambord, it’s so beautiful here, go on, come and join me. She doesn’t know that I thrill at these words, that I pack my bag within the hour, jump onto obscure trains, undertaking a seven-hour journey that starts with a cappuccino at the Arrivals bar. At Montceau-les-Mines station, where stray dogs stray between dense tufts of soft green grass, I read about Yann Andréa’s death in a copy of Libération picked up from a bench. 14:59, still four more hours till I get there. In the heat that blurs the rails at Moulins-sur-Allier station, eating a ham sandwich and drinking lemonade seem to be exactly the right things to do as I screw up my eyes on the deserted platform and embark on a Hervé Guibert book I’ve never read, Les Aventures singulières. She writes oh come quickly my darling quickly my love I’m pining for you I need your skin. At Saint-Pierre-des-Corps I run frantically to make my next connection. The sun’s going down, I’ve been traveling since dawn. At Blois station I take a taxi to Chambord. I’m dumbstruck by the sight of the château, which suddenly appears around a bend in a tree-lined drive. She writes we’re starting our scales, we’re playing Franck’s quintet, it’s so beautiful, I can’t wait for you to hear it. I run over the gravel up to the château, my bag slung across my body. There she is, in the distance, a tiny figure, walking carefully over the empty, abandoned lawn in her concert shoes, her high-heeled shoes, in her very distinguished long black dress. She hugs me, she inhales my panting breath between her lips. She reigns over Chambord, she dominates my heart, she governs my life. She’s a queen.
47
In the hunting lodge in the middle of the night – after the concert, after the social niceties – she lies me down on the narrow single bed in her room, she licks the inside of my wrists for a long time, she stifles my cries with her hand, she eats my whole body, and every place she touches keeps the moist trace of her mouth and the smell of her saliva all night. On the train to Paris the next day she has a work meeting with the rest of her quartet. I’m sitting a little way away, and she often looks up at me and smiles, she smiles a smile that imprints itself in me like a tattoo.
48
The summer spools by like this. When we’re together life goes too quickly, hurtling past. She runs – and I run along behind her – through the corridors of the Métro, to catch trains on time, to meet up when she comes home. She walks – and I walk along behind her – through the streets of Paris that we explore tirelessly, she jumps onto the pillars at the Colonnes de Buren art installation, she’s a child, she’s wowed by the color of clouds, she’s a child. I’m in love with a child. She scuttles into the bathroom and I scuttle in behind her, behind the shower curtain where I wash her body as if washing something sacred. She stands up straight and I stand behind her, looking at the departures board, when she goes away again. In this new life that I’m leading alongside hers, there are stations and trains, but not for me, never. It’s all about that. So trains the whole time, then: trains to catch, trains on time, chock-full trains, night trains, late trains. There are airports, planes, boarding schedules, landing schedules, carousels for collecting luggage; there are taxis, Métros and changing on the Métro. Not for me, then, ever. I accompany her, at a run, short of breath, we’ve shared the bags between us and we often race onto the platform just a minute before the departure, but sometimes we don’t, sometimes we have time for a long kiss before that familiar ding sound. Departures; there I am with my reassuring words have a good trip, use the journey to get some rest, my stupid words don’t forget me or maybe write to me, promise you will, promise you’ll write, there I am coming out with words that I mostly communicate with my eyes, and my lips formulate the most ridiculous love you shapes of my adult life, there I am making heart shapes with my fingers, I step forward slightly when the train sets off, not taking my eyes off hers, there I am laughing at her antics through the window, and then I stop and, with my hands in my pockets, I go back to the city that’s carried on with its life. Arrivals; there I am waiting on the platform, my heart pounding, looking out for her face, noticing in passing what other people look like, all those other people, and not one of them interests me, I look out for her and hop up and down impatiently, I want everything, instantly, the shape of her, her smile, her eyes, her perfume, her mouth. Often the arrival is in the evening and the departure the next morning. Often within the space of twenty-four hours we meet up on a platform at one station and say our goodbyes on a platform at another. Sometimes it’s the same station. That’s how life goes that summer.
49
In a restaurant where my parents have taken me to celebrate my first year as a teacher, I blush and tell them I’m in love with a woman. They say oh right and what’s her name.
50
She joins me in a house straight out of a fairy tale, a place that belongs to some friends of mine, in the depths of the Aveyron region. She’s stunned by the vegetable garden, by the caravan in the field where we take our siestas, with her nose against mine. She shivers when a storm rolls in. She shivers when I read her an erotic passage by Hervé Guibert. She runs a bath for me, she dries my hair, she kisses my cheeks wetted with tears when I’m miserable at the thought of her leaving again soon, already. She watches me make a risotto with lemon, with mint, with onions, with hazelnuts. Under the flowery sheet in the bedroom suffused with a blueish light, she makes love to me tirelessly. She runs through the rain with her jacket over her head to go and buy lubricant at the pharmacy. She comes back, laughing uproariously, mimicking the woman’s face when she said what she needed. She says what a bitch I mean what a bitch she wouldn’t have given a damn if I’d bought condoms. She puts vinyls on the record player, she insists that we learn the boogie-woogie, she finds dance instruction videos and we watch them, laughing, we go out into the street to have more space to dance, it’s three o’clock, four o’clock in the morning. On the square in that Aveyron village she holds up her arms and beats out the time, one two three ba-ba-da, one two three ba-ba-da, she corrects me, left leg, and ba-ba-da, and ba-ba-da, she lights cigarettes, she has sweat between her breasts, she laughs, she says it’s funny I never feel tired with you, the nights are even better than our days.